2018-06-04

Disgust Is Coming Back

Long before microscopes revealed unseen germs and parasites, humans developed a system of disgust, with six basic triggers warning us to turn away from harmful pathogens, according to a study published Sunday in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

"Disgust evolved to protect us from disease in our ancient past. The disgust response today may, or may not, be a good guide to what might make us sick today," said Val Curtis, lead author of the study and a professor and director of the Environmental Health Group of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

A billboard on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood screams out a stark warning: "drug-resistant gonorrhea alert!"

The words are set against a black background and accompanied by a microscope shot of the gonococcus bacteria, which causes the illness now running rampant in California.

Sexually transmitted diseases have made an alarming resurgence across the United States, where 2016 saw a record two million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, including 628 cases of congenital syphilis.

Negative social mood is associated with rising rates of infectious diseases because when a person is depressed they are more susceptible to illness. Negative mood is also dovetailing with peak social mood behavior, such as sexual promiscuity.In some ways the United States resembles Weimar Germany in culture, certainly in the area of sexuality. The sexual revolution was the final wave of a 400-year period of rising mood that coincided with the throwing off of tradition and religion, and as in Weimar Germany or ancient Rome and Greece before, these behaviors are associated with late stage civilizations.

The major peaks in social mood are also turning points in history. The popular opinion on things like sexuality is that religion is outdated and people who have disgust reactions to abnormal sexuality such as homosexuality and promiscuity are evil in some way, resting in the background on the Enlightenment idea of the Blank Slate and a perverted version of the equality message within it.

As the Industrial Revolution went hand-in-hand with the Enlightenment, so the Genetic Revolution goes hand-in-hand with the end as science conclusively disproves the Blank Slate. Simultaneously, negative mood presents an opening to religion as "science" disproves "itself." Science can't disprove itself since it is a process, but many people believe in a false dichotomy and animosity between science and religion. If a scientist said experiments confirmed you should go to a fundamentalist church and take your priest's advice on life, it would shock people today. It won't in 100 years.